No son seres humanos

"No son seres humanos" is the expression Jan Schmitt uses to deny the humanity of Jewish people targeted for murder. Its recurrence—from the journey past ghettos to a mass execution in Estonia—shows how racist classification can prepare a witness to regard persecution as permissible, even when he does not personally take part in every abuse. For Adrián Gallardo, who had treated Jan’s declarations as hateful words detached from action, the refrain becomes impossible to dismiss when murder unfolds before them.

The Belief Behind the Expression

As Jan and Adrián travel from the Leningrad Front through Ukraine toward the Baltic Sea, they pass crowded trains, barbed-wire enclosures, barracks, and city ghetto walls. Adrián notices Jewish people marked with yellow stars and sees the fear on their faces, as well as soldiers’ arbitrary violence: people are beaten, raped, or stripped in the street for amusement. Jan reads these same sights through a different, racist premise. He calls the victims bipedal mammals but denies that they are human, presenting his hatred as scientific truth rather than a feeling that needs argument.

The phrase therefore does more than insult its targets. Jan’s classification turns their visible suffering into something he claims need not call forth ordinary human recognition. The narrative places this assertion against the concrete vulnerability of the people Adrián sees, exposing the moral work performed by language that recasts victims as a lesser kind of being.

Words Adrián Had Learned to Discount

Jan’s public character complicates, but does not excuse, the belief. He is described as loyal, brave, generous, humorous, and willing to risk himself for weaker comrades. He shares what he has and does not abandon a companion in battle. Yet alongside those qualities lies a fierce hatred that Adrián cannot explain. Jan never actively joins in the humiliations he witnesses, saying he will not dirty his hands; Adrián takes comfort in treating his pronouncements as cruel, perverse ideas that would not become a reality he could not avoid.

That accommodation is itself consequential. Adrián needs Jan’s companionship to find his way in an unfamiliar northern army, and gradually becomes accustomed to his friend’s verbal excesses. The expression survives in their relationship as something Adrián can hear without fully confronting—until circumstances remove the distance between hateful theory and its victims.

The Refrain at the Execution

At the killing site in northern Estonia, Adrián and Jan stand by a truck as Jewish prisoners are selected. The guards separate men from women, with the women to be killed first. Jan watches the selection and repeats that the prisoners are not human, qualifying the denial with the same claim that they are mammals and bipedal. Adrián answers quietly with a blunt rejection of the premise. His response marks the point at which he can no longer shelter behind the idea that Jan’s words are merely abstract.

The expression returns as a whispered, rhythmic refrain while people pray in Hebrew. The narration sets Jan’s monotone against the prisoners’ prayer, placing the language of dehumanization beside the voices of those about to die. As the executions proceed, one hundred women are shot within less than an hour; their bodies are stacked in layers with logs, and the men’s turn follows. The repeated phrase does not cause the killings by itself, but its presence at the scene shows the belief persisting in the face of undeniable human suffering.

Narrative Function and Moral Consequence

The expression links Adrián’s earlier evasion to the execution he can no longer treat as remote. Before Estonia, he could interpret Jan’s racism as an ugly theory contained within an otherwise loyal friend. At the killing site, the selection of prisoners and the mass shooting give that theory its human consequences. The refrain’s repetition makes the change in Adrián’s understanding audible: what he had tolerated as talk now accompanies an atrocity he is witnessing.

The scene’s force also comes from the contrast between Jan’s claim and the narrative’s specific attention to the prisoners’ humanity: their fear, their prayers, and their presence as people facing death. The words attempt to erase that recognition; the scene restores it. The phrase thus functions not as a neutral description but as an instrument of moral denial, and its recurrence records the failure of Adrián’s former defense that hateful words could remain separate from reality.